Science Press Package

This information is embargoed until:

Please cite the journal Science and the publisher, AAAS, the science society, as the source of this information. Please hyperlink to www.sciencemag.org when publishing online.

Summaries of Articles in the 5 June Science

Evidence Against a Global Warming Hiatus?
An analysis using updated global surface temperature data disputes the existence of a 21st century global warming slowdown described in studies including the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. The new analysis suggests no discernable decrease in the rate of warming between the second half of the 20th century, a period marked by manmade warming, and the first fifteen years of the 21st century, a period dubbed a global warming “hiatus.” Numerous studies have been done to explain the possible causes of the apparent hiatus. Here, Karl and colleagues focused on aspects of the hiatus influenced by biases from temperature observation networks, which are always changing. Using updated and corrected temperature observations taken at thousands of weather observing stations over land and as many commercial ships and buoys at sea, the researchers show that temperatures in the 21st century did not plateau, as thought. Instead, the rate of warming during the first fifteen years of the 21st century is at least as great as that in the last half of the 20th century, suggesting warming is continuing apace. According to these and other results, the authors suggest the warming slowdown was an illusion, an artifact of earlier analyses.

Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming “hiatus.” Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.

Karl et al expand on that highlighted discussion in the text of the paper (our boldface):

It is also noteworthy that the new global trends are statistically significant and positive at the 0.10 significance level for 1998–2012 (Fig. 1 and table S1) using the approach described in (25) for determining trend uncertainty. In contrast, IPCC (1), which also utilized the approach in (25), re-ported no statistically significant trends for 1998-2012 in any of the three primary global surface temperature datasets. Moreover, for 1998–2014, our new global trend is 0.106± 0.058°C dec−1, and for 2000–2014 it is 0.116± 0.067°C dec−1 (see table S1 for details). This is similar to the warming of the last half of the 20th century (Fig. 1). A more comprehensive approach for determining the 0.10 significance level (see supplement) that also accounts for the impact of annual errors of estimate on the trend, also shows that the 1998–2014 and 2000–2014 trends (but not 1998–2012) were positive at the 0.10 significance level.

THE MISDIRECTION

As shown in their Figure 1 (also our Figure 1), Karl et al. (2015) used the periods of 1951 to 2012 and 1950 to 1999 as references for the recent slowdown in surface warming. The IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report serves as the justification for the early-1950s start point for their reference periods. See Chapter 2 and Chapter 9 of AR5 for the IPCC’s brief mention of the slowdown in global surface warming.

Figure 1

Yet the climate model-based projections of a disaster-filled future global surface warming better align with the warming rate of the recent warming period, which began in the mid-1970s, not 1950. See Figure 2, which uses the GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index data, because the new NCDC data have not yet been released. Keep in mind there was an earlier hiatus that lasted from the early-to-mid 1940s to the mid-1970s.

Figure 2

If NOAA would like to revise their estimates of future global warming to reflect the more benign warming rate of 0.1 deg C/decade from 1950 to 1999, it would be a big step toward their coming to terms with reality.

We illustrate the ever-growing differences between models and data in the monthly global surface temperature (and lower troposphere temperature) update posts. Figure 3 is the model-data comparison from the April 2015 update.

Figure 3

NEW DATA USED

In many respects, the paper is an introduction to a revised global surface temperature dataset from NOAA. For the oceans, it includes their new ERSST.v4 sea surface temperature data. We discussed that new NOAA sea surface temperature data in the post Has NOAA Once Again Tried to Adjust Data to Match Climate Models? (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)

For the land portion, Karl et al. (2015) state:

Third, there have also been advancements in the calculation of land surface air temperatures (LSTs). The most important is the release of the International Surface Temperature Initiative (ISTI) databank (14, 19), which forms the basis of the LST component of our new analysis. The ISTI databank integrates the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN)–Daily dataset (20) with over 40 other historical data sources, more than doubling the number of stations available.

ADJUSTMENTS MAKE MOST OF THE WARMING

NCDC has been in the business of adjusting the surface temperature record for quite some time. The modus operandi so far has been to get a new paper published describing what NCDC considers to be a new and improved dataset, and since NCDC’s articles are often peer reviewed by other government employed scientists at NOAA, they often don’t get a critical peer review. Certainly, based on the reports I’ve received over the years, few if any skeptic scientists have ever been asked to review an NCDC paper on a new global temperature dataset and the techniques involved.

Fortunately, it is very easy to divine such adjustments by comparing the raw data and the final adjusted data, as shown in the graph below. Note how the past gets cooler, centered around 1915 and the present gets warmer.

Figure 4 Maturity diagram showing net change since 17 May 2008 in the global monthly surface air temperature record prepared by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), USA. The net result of the adjustments made are becoming substantial, and adjustments since May 2006 occasionally exceeds 0.1oC. Before 1945 global temperatures are generally changed toward lower values, and toward higher values after 1945, resulting in a more pronounced 20th century warming (about 0.15oC) compared to the NCDC temperature record published in May 2008. Arrows indicate two months where the adjustments over time are illustrated in the figure below. Last diagram update: 19 May 2015. Source: Professor Ole Humlum

Figure 4

On May 2, 2011, NCDC transitioned to GHCN-M version 3 as the official land component of its global temperature monitoring efforts. In November 2011, the GHCN-M version 3.1.0 replaced the GHCN-M version 3. The overall net effect of the transition from GHCN-M version 2 to version 3 is to increase global temperatures before 1900, to decrease them between 1900 and 1950, and to increase temperatures after 1950.

The diagram below exemplify adjustments made by NCDC since May 2008 for two single months (see arrows in diagram above); January 1915 and January 2000.

Figure 5 Diagram showing the adjustment made since May 2008 by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in the anomaly values for the two months January 1915 and January 2000. Last diagram update 19 May 2015. Source: Professor Ole Humlum

Figure 5

Clearly, with each revision of data, NCDC is making the past cooler and the near present warmer through their adjustment process of the original data. To revisit something said in regards to a previous news story about NCDC’s tendency to adjust data as time goes on, so much so that they can’t even tell us with certainty anymore which month in the past century was the warmest on record, this is still applicable:

“Is history malleable? Can temperature data of the past be molded to fit a purpose? It certainly seems to be the case here, where the temperature for July 1936 reported … changes with the moment,” Watts told FoxNews.com.

“In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.”

Hold that thought, because NCDC is at it again.

THE IMPACT OF NOAA’S SHIP-BUOY BIAS ADJUSTMENTS DURING THE SLOWDOWN HAVE MADE THEIR NEW SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATASET AN OUTLIER

You’ll note in Figure 1 that the biggest changes between the new and old NOAA data during the global-warming-slowdown periods are in the sea surface temperature data, not the land surface air temperature data. Those adjustments are supposed to be justified by ship-buoy biases. See the quotes in the post Quick Look at the DATA for the New NOAA Sea Surface Temperature Dataset, under the heading of SHIP-BUOY BIAS CORRECTIONS IN ERSST.v4.

(Note 1: the buoys being discussed are NOT ARGO floats. The buoys used for sea surface temperature measurements are Surface Drifting Buoys and fixed buoys like the TAO Project buoys. Note 2: the latitudes of 60S-60N were used for the following graphs to avoid any differences in how sea ice is accounted for between the datasets and to be consistent with the two papers that introduced the new ERSST.v4 data. Note 3: the trends shown are for sea surface temperatures. They are not directly comparable to the trends discussed by Karl et al. in the second quote, which were for combined land-plus-ocean data.)

THE UKMO HASST3 data have also been adjusted for ship-buoy biases. For the two slowdown periods presented by Karl et al., Figures 6 and 7 compare the HADSST3 and the new NOAA ERSST.v4 data, both of which have been “corrected” for ship-buoys biases, to the older NOAA ERSST.v3b which had not been adjusted for those biases. During both periods, the bias-adjusted HADSST3 data have a much lower trend than the bias-adjusted NOAA ERSST.v4 data. In fact, the bias-corrected HADSST3 data in both cases is more in line with the older NOAA data than the new.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Some might think that NOAA under the direction of Tom Karl designed their ship-buoy bias adjustments with the sole intent of minimizing the impacts of natural slowdown in surface warming. (Those would be some interesting emails and meeting minutes to read.)

And just in case you’re wondering, the new NOAA ERSST.v4 data are compared to the NOAA and UKMO satellite-enhanced sea surface temperature data in Figures 8 and 9.

BUT THE WARMING RATES OF NOAA’S OLD AND NEW SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATA ARE THE SAME OVER THE PAST 3+ DECADES

The satellite era of sea surface temperature data started in November 1981. Neither of the NOAA sea surface temperature reconstructions (new or old) utilize the satellite-enhanced data. The original version of the NOAA ERSST.v3 data included satellite data when they were first released in 2008, but the satellite data were removed before the dataset became “official” because they did not meet political agenda of the dataset users, which were only NOAA at that time. The revised dataset was renamed ERSST.v3b. It is ERSST.v3b that Karl et al. are calling the “old” data.

But we can learn something very interesting if we compare NOAA’s ERSST.v4 (new) and ERSST.v3b (old) data during the satellite era. See Figure 10.

Figure 10

The warming rates are the same.

But the new data show a much higher warming rate during the “hiatus” periods, and that means…

TO MANUFACTURE WARMING DURING THE HIATUS, NOAA ADJUSTED THE PRE-HIATUS DATA DOWNWARD

If we subtract the ERSST.v3b (old) data from the new ERSST.v4 data, Figure 11, we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did.

Figure 11

Remember the adjusted data from figures 4 and 5 above? Figure 11 uses the same data subtraction method to determine the difference between the original measured data, and the “new and improved”adjusted data courtesy of government-funded science. It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise.

Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.

It’s like John Lovitz Saturday Night Live character “Pathological liar”, Tommy Flanagan was in charge.

Gee, we need to show more sea surface warming during the hiatus, but we don’t want to increase the trend since about 1982.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone could take the new NOAA global surface temperature data seriously.

The greatest changes in the new NOAA surface temperature analysis is to the ocean temperatures since 1998. This seems rather ironic, since this is the period where there is the greatest coverage of data with the highest quality of measurements – ARGO buoys and satellites don’t show a warming trend. Nevertheless, the NOAA team finds a substantial increase in the ocean surface temperature anomaly trend since 1998.

In my opinion, the gold standard dataset for global ocean surface temperatures is the UK dataset, HadSST3. A review of the uncertainties is given in this paper by John Kennedy http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst3/uncertainty.html. Note, the UK group has dealt with the same issues raised by the NOAA team. I personally see no reason to the use the NOAA ERSST dataset, I do not see any evidence that the NOAA group has done anywhere near as careful a job as the UK group in processing the ocean temperatures.

I am also unconvinced by NOAA’s gap filling in the Arctic, and in my opinion this introduces substantial error into their analysis. I addressed the issue of gap filling in the Arctic in this recent publication: Curry JA, 2014: Climate science: Uncertain temperature trends. Nature Geoscience, 7, 83-84.

Relevant text:

Gap filling in the Arctic is complicated by the presence of land, open water and temporally varying sea ice extent, because each surface type has a distinctly different amplitude and phasing of the annual cycle of surface temperature. Notably, the surface temperature of sea ice remains flat during the sea ice melt period roughly between June and September, whereas land surface warming peaks around July 1. Hence using land temperatures to infer ocean or sea ice temperatures can incur significant biases.

With regards to uncertainty, in their ‘warmest year’ announcement last January, NOAA cited an error margin in the global average surface temperature anomaly of 0.09oC. The adjustments to the global average surface temperature anomaly is within the error margin, but the large magnitude of the adjustments further support a larger error margin. But they now cite a substantially greater trend for the period 1998-2014, that is now statistically greater than zero at the 90% confidence level.

My bottom line assessment is this. I think that uncertainties in global surface temperature anomalies is substantially understated. The surface temperature data sets that I have confidence in are the UK group and also Berkeley Earth. This short paper in Science is not adequate to explain and explore the very large changes that have been made to the NOAA data set. The global surface temperature datasets are clearly a moving target. So while I’m sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don’t regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.

0845
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States has reported that an apparent slowdown in the pace of global warming in recent years may be an illusion based on skewed data. The ‘hiatus’ in warming has previously been used by some to question the existence of man-made climate change. The report raises questions about the way scientists calculate global warming and the interpretation of their data. Tom Karl is lead author of NOAA report on climate change.

It was my understanding that if global warming were to continue at a high rate, then according to some people, huge damages could result if the temperature were allowed to go 2 C above the 1750 temperature. Then we presumably had a hiatus and suddenly the pressure seemed to be off for a while. (By the way, NOAA defines a “hiatus” as a slowdown in warming and not a complete stop, so we are NOT talking about a pause with a very slight negative slope when talking about whether or not we are in fact experiencing an “hiatus”.)
I am totally perplexed by their whole approach, and I believe their analysis is very misleading.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (1) concluded that the global surface temperature “has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years [1998-2012] than over the past 30 to 60 years.”

They give this statement, but never say what the warming was over the last 30 years. Nick Stokes’ site gives numbers that are very close to their “old” values. For 1998 to 2012, Nick had 0.0374/decade, but for January 1985 to December 2014, he had 0.1543/decade. However you may recall the interview with Phil Jones where he was asked about the slope from 1975 to 1998. It turns out that for NOAA, this is 0.1805/decade. Compared to 0.1805 or 0.1543, I would think that a value of 0.0374 would represent a hiatus in the opinion of most people. But it does not end here. In the end, a highly adjusted value for 2000 to 2014 is compared with a somewhat adjusted value for 1950 to 1999 to come to a conclusion that no hiatus occurred. But what slope would you expect from a 50 year period where there was virtually no change for half of the time?

In summary, newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s NCEI do not support the notion of a global warming “hiatus.”
Our new analysis now shows the trend over the period 1950-1999, a time widely agreed as having significant anthropogenic global warming (1), is 0.113°C dec−1, which is virtually indistinguishable with the trend over the period 2000-2014 (0.116°C dec−1).

The above statement perplexes me. They appear to be satisfied that they have proven to themselves and hopefully others that no hiatus occurred. But in doing so, they have, in my mind, proven that there is no catastrophic warming occurring either. A warming rate of 1.16 C/century will not reach 2 C by 2100.

so 1.13°C PER CENTURY is what all the big fuss is about? Anything less than 2°C is agreed to be beneficial. So, for the next 100 years at least we would be much, much better off to do nothing about CO2 emission.

in point of fact, by cutting emissions we would be paying money to hurt future generations!!

Dishonest is the word, not misleading. These fraudsters are playing their political masters’ tune. Yet again, after much adumbration, lo, we find that temperatures were all wrong in the past and we need to adjust them all downwards … again.

Who goes into a career in climate science? Treehuggers. No one else in their right mind finds any value in the field (as opposed to meteorology). Right there is the root cause of the extreme bias in the field. Sound snarky? Perhaps, but I wager it’s the truth!

and the value should only be to the second decimal place. All other figures are irrelevant if the number preceding them are uncertain (exception made for errors where the first sig fig is 1). Putting them in implies that they are significant ie meaningful so Pat’s comment is correct.

I went looking for accuracy and just what they are able to measure after one of Bob posts back in December and had a real awakening. Seems that overall measuring of ‘sea surface’ has problems. Original bucket & thermometer (no depth control), ship intake (well below surface and varied depth due to load +/-20 feet), buoys (seem to rock in the wave with depth resolution of a meter), then IR satellite (cannot get thru the clouds) to microwave (get thru the clouds, but not the rain & surface mist). Oh and did I mention one of the satellites was doing reasonable until they had to boost the altitude, then had problems with pitch, yaw and just had no idea the height it was flying. The number of adjustments to correct is staggering. Includes (but not limited to); wind speed, rain, cloud amount/percent and cloud water vapor, daytime diurnal warming, high latitudes, aerosols, SSTs <10C, columnar water vapor, higher latitudes show a slight warm bias, seasonal cycle wind direction for SST retrieval, fast moving storms and fronts, wind direction error and instrument degradation.

Still their abstract reads –Errors were identified in both the MW and IR SST data sets: (1) at low atmospheric water vapor a posthoc correction added to AMSR-E was incorrectly applied and (2) there is significant cloud contamination of nighttime MODIS retrievals at SST <10C. A correction is suggested for AMSR-E SSTs that will remove the vapor dependency. For MODIS, once the cloud contaminated data were excluded, errors were reduced but not eliminated. Biases were found to be 20.05C and 20.13C and standard deviations to be 0.48C and 0.58C for AMSR-E and MODIS, respectively. Using a three-way error analysis, individual standard deviations were determined to be 0.20C (in situ), 0.28C (AMSR-E), and 0.38C (MODIS).

To put that in perspective, the error bars would be the white shaded areas on all the graphed figures above.

And the AGW crooks continue to manufacture their facts and then change them as they see fit. How long will it be before we are getting the same treatment about reality as the chinese give their people concerning Tiananmen square? The public needs to wake up before it is too late.

Well done guys. Frankly the level of desperation shown by NCEI is staggering. I know that they’re worried about inaction on AGW but this really isn’t the way to change things. Why can’t they see that this type of slight of hand damages them? I can only hope that the Met Office are feeling uneasy at their trans Atlantic partners and don’t decide to follow suit.

So, we’ve been wrong over the past 10 years or so about the temperature over the past 20 years or so…. but we nonetheless know how much the temperature has gone up since 1900 or 1800 or 1750? Good grief!

Indeed. Rather specifically, any that tout this new paper as valid are stating that we have not — in fact — known the temperature at all. Neither absolute, relative, or trending. Which makes the rather stern claim that we need to stop and wait for their results to be replicated/vetted by numerous and independent parties before we accept that we actually know the temperature now.

Indeed, this period should never be accepted as accurate. The post says, ” Keep in mind there was an earlier hiatus that lasted from the early-to-mid 1940s to the mid-1970s” Complete acceptance of prior lies, just because they are old, is nonsense. There was no pause then. it was strong global cooling, about .6 degrees in the NH, and .2 in the SH.

NOAA global and hemispheric temperature graphs all showed this cooling. The removal of the “blip” was criminal. The latest changes are criminal as well. When these current fraudulent changes are a decade or two old, will WUWT posters begin accepting them, as the removal of the blip is now apparently accepted by this line.. ” Keep in mind there was an earlier hiatus that lasted from the early-to-mid 1940s to the mid-1970s”

The problem is that the mainstream media – journalists that don’t have a clue – will swallow it hook line and sinker. A new warmist ‘meme’ will be born, and it will take years to get rid of it. Website and Newspaper articles don’t get retracted.

Expect a George Monbiot column and a Geoffery Lean article on the subject very soon…

Only comparisons to Orwell will suffice after Paris 2015.
Orwell’s writings will have to be used to see the obfuscation of the New World Order’s “Ministry of Truth”. In no other context will it make sense to any but the sheep following their masters.

We will be hearing jaw dropping lies. The satire, yielding parody will be interpreted as “the new truth” if we do not all keep vigilant in exposing their continued falsehoods……

If you told me in 1979 that 35+ years into having satellite temperature data we would still be arguing over and making adjustments to historical surface measurements, I would have been highly amused. It’s not a laughing matter today.

The intellectual dishonesty of all these supposed scientists who choose to use the surface measured data for medium to long term climate modeling is staggering. Every time we see some supposed expert saying “look! squirrel!” while pointing at the surface data, it erodes all measure of trust in modern “mainstream” climate science.

Moreover, for 1998–2014, our new global trend is 0.106± 0.058°C dec−1, and for 2000–2014 it is 0.116± 0.067°C dec−1 (see table S1 for details). This is similar to the warming of the last half of the 20th century (Fig. 1).”

Hey, it’s not as bad as we thought – at this rate it will take nearly two centuries (from the 1950s? 1970s? 2010s?) to see the dreaded +2°C temperature rise. Dang, I’ll miss it.

If it were not because of where this paper came from, it would not be worth a comment at all.
Look at “Figure 1 from Karl et al”. Not all of the desired effect was obtained by simply adjusting the temperatures. By manipulating the temperature record in the way they did, they also opened up the Confidence Interval of the “hiatus” vs. the base period. In this way the two are not significantly different. Also note that the gold standard of 95% confidence (p=0.05) has been tossed overboard in favor of the much looser 90% confidence (p=0.10) test.

It’s clear, the whole GW problem has become a political issue of major importance. Everything is allowed to promote the green agenda of the west. Our MSM produce only widespread green information, fraud about temperature adjestments is legal because the authority tells us.
Sea level rise is caused by global warming, natural rise is already 80 meters and only natural variability is able to lower the sea level. The greenies may think that they can lower sealevel they can forget

although I usually qualify that statement, eg., ‘There is not one scintilla of evidence that withstands ordinary and expected levels of scientific rigour and scrutiny that CO2 emissions CAUSE SIGNIFICANT changes in temperature in Earth’s climate system.’

We cannot yet even with our best measuring equipment/devices detect the signal (if any) to CO2. If there is such a signal it is lost within natural variability and/or within the error bounds of our best measuring equipment/devices.

If the error bands are large (and I suspect that if one is honest they are), then there is still scope for CO2 to be a driver of temperature, but if the error bands are small (as the warmists claim), then CO2 is not s ignificant driver and at best it is merely a bit player swamped by natural variability.

If the temperature change following the CO2 concentration change is a “signal” it travels at superluminal speed violating relativity theory. Thus, it is best to characterize the temperature change from the CO2 concentration change as a “message.”

If NOAA would like to revise their estimates of future global warming to reflect the more benign warming rate of 0.1 deg C/decade from 1950 to 1999, it would be a big step toward their coming to terms with reality.

Your first mistake is comparing a 50 year trend to a 25 yr trend to a 30 yr trend. Do you think its wise to evaluate the CMIP5 mean future trend only, ignoring any hindcasting, omitting model spread, comparing it to a 50 yr trend, and calling it unrealistic? You think maybe you simplified that comparison a bit too much? Not to mention my eyes are now bleeding after looking at Bob Tisdale’s graphs.

Fitting that this post has absolutely no mention of the actual methods used in these adjustments, no discussion of whether there is a need for adjustments (there most certainly is), and not a single alternative proposed for accounting for bias! Also missing from this post is the fact that these new adjustments show an overall DECREASE in the trend for the dataset.

Your Figure 5 is very significant, because it shows the direct linkage between NCDC adjustments onto temperatures of 1915 & 2000 (i.e., mirrored adjustments 85 years apart). There is no possible justification for such linkage unless NOAA has no idea what the absolute values of each are. With absolute values, any adjustment has it own unique provenance — opposing adjustments spanning an 85 year data gap is inconceivable. This kind of graph (i.e., figure 5 of this article) is a *killer* weapon against the alarmists’ deceit. Keep up the great work!

It may very well be the coldest out if the last 250 million years in the Big Picture view if we count the Holocene as a misnamed chunk of the Pleistocene. The Permian was about as cool, and as impoverished in CO2. That requires averaging the present with the Pleistocene, but if they want to cherry pick, then why not?

With every peak being somewhat lower than the preceding peak, ie., the Minoan Warm Period is cooler than the Holocene Optimum, and the Roman Warm Period cooler than the Minoan Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period cooler than the Roman Warm Period, and the late 20th Century Warm Period lower than the Medieval Warm Period.

As you note, the Earth is cooling but this cooling trend is interupted from time to time with short intervals of warmth, but overall it is a downward tragetory.

“In the field of climate change there have been no shortage of ad hoc “saving hypotheses”; however, according to Occam, “plurality should not be posited without necessity,” and, as with the Ptolemaic epicycles, that is precisely what the climate scientists are doing. Which is not to say that some sort of formula that satisfies Occam isn’t possible — but its necessity as a fully adequate explanation would have to be demonstrated, and that has, as yet, not been done. In fact most if not all of the posited explanations look very much like arbitrary efforts to explain away the difficulties by filling in certain gaps with ad hoc, retrospectively derived, models.”

“In responding to these crises, scientists generally do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. Rather, they usually devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict. Some, unable to tolerate the crisis, leave the profession. As a rule, persistent and recognised anomaly does not induce crisis . Failure to achieve the expected solution to a puzzle discredits only the scientist and not the theory To evoke a crisis, an anomaly must usually be more than just an anomaly. Scientists who paused and examined every anomaly would not get much accomplished. An anomaly must come to be seen as more than just another puzzle of normal science.” — Thomas Kuhn

That’s a good observation. I’m a retired designer and manager of a string of scientific studies. The ongoing study of global warming takes the cake as the most ineptly or dishonestly designed study I’ve ever seen.

I wish I could use their methodology in my past share market investments. I could then prove to my wife that all the money she thought we had lost is still there. In fact just thinking about it makes me feel a lit bit wealthier.

I believe that’s just Judith saying, in an inverted sort of way, that she doesn’t trust GISS to produce a valid temperature data set. Perhaps, if she lived in the UK, she’d take GISS Temp as the gold standard.

Follow up suggestion. With some editing (SNL), this really should be a submission to the GWPF adjustments investigation. IIRC the submission window is still open. It would broaden their focus from land adjustments in a useful and timely manner.

What this paper is saying is that, at no time in the last 65 years have we had warming over 0.116º per decade, when averaged out to smooth out the intermediate bumps. The IPCC estimated that we should have no less than 0.16º of warming in the 2000s, and more like 0.19º afterwards (i.e. now). So, this report essentially says that we are substantially lower in warming than the IPCC claimed we must be.

Obama has to create meaningless “agreements” such as with the Chinese earlier this year, because he cannot actually sign a treaty without Congress, and hopefully the Rinos there will at least not give him that.

I haven’t read the paper, but when I look at their lead-off Figure 1 from Karl et al my first thought is that this is a sad day for climate science. They are touting a new adjustment that INCREASES the error of the estimate. I don’t see how a less precise estimate that almost wholly overlaps with the previous estimate is progress, it seems like a step backward.

At what point do such endless ‘adjustments’ morph from valid scientific interpretation to outright fraud? Already it’s clear this paper is politically-motivated agit-prop on the run-up to Paris. There really should be consequences for producing such deliberately misleading junk in order to influence $multi-billion contracts and policies.

Call me crazy or call me a dreamer, but it strikes me that it should be possible to formulate a Bayesian model/process that could calculate the veracity for individual scientific data-based analyses and/or model based predictions. Usually over time, Bayesian updating will home-in and narrow the error bounds of predictions of analysis outputs, (e.g., global dT/dt) when well defined, executed experiments/methods, and careful measurement are involved. I ask the question: can data in combination with bayesian analysis of prior data tell you whether a researcher has corrupted current data? Certainly this is true with dice and card games.

Considering the seeming NOAA data abuse reference in the post above, it strikes me that such a Bayesian analyses of select climate data (for a spectrum of data and/or model predictions) might reveal possible utter chaos, uncertainty, and corruption of such data. Call it the Bayesian lie detector!

Probably easier said than done; let me know is it even worth thinking about … and your ideas as well.

Thanks …. this is the issue I was trying to address, but Ross said it much more succinctly and clearer. In a less technical sense; as we all know; the trouble with fabricating (lying) is that eventually it’s hard to keep them all straight … wouldn’t it be great to have a tool (Bayesian) to sort it all out!

The value add is supposed to be that they are the data stewards of our temperature record. Unfortunately instead of acting with the integrity and objectivity required of data stewards, NOAA leadership is more comfortable in the role of political hacks.

Karl et al 2015 say they used the ISTI database for land temperatures. I’ve been keeping track of the ISTI database. In February I did a duplicate check on their monthly ‘Recommended’ stage 3 database. It is a compiliation of all data they haven’t discarded as obviously in error. 32000+ stations, almost 1.4 million lines of data. I found the database is heavily polluted with duplicate data across stations within an individual country. In some cases more than 10 stations within a single country contain many months of identical data when compared with other in country stations for the same year, though not for all years of their records. e.g. station ‘A’ has the same monthly data as stations “B-K” for 1951-1957, but may all be quite different in other years. In actuality many of the duplications can go on for decades at a time. I wrote the ISTI group back in October pointing out Finland and also Sweden as examples having some records of more than 160 years with 2/3rds of it duplicated at other stations.

Nowhere on the ISTI site can I find a pared down database with all such duplicates removed or any indication of how they would select which station has the correct data. I view that dataset as a work in progress with currently no legitimate reason for its use. I found 73,581 cases of duplicate data of at least 7 months in a year, 26807 of those had 12 months duplicated. Common missing months across stations were not considered duplicates.

Even with removal of duplicate data they would still have to justify which station’s data to retain as not all years are duplicated. I’m very much interested in finding out how they selected station data or if they used the whole dataset. Seems to me it is a fertile ground for finding cherries.

Here is a log. graph of the annual monthly duplications I found when comparing the same year to same year for all combinations of stations within a country. The distribution is terribly skewed from what should be normal.

Those are identical matches shown above, but due to rounding many stations do not use the 100ths field, I think a more appropriate monthly comparison is +/- 0.05C. Using that for comparison would more than double the matches found.

Let me get this straight. When skeptics say there is bias in the temperature series, AGW scientists say we are full of horse sh**. But when THEY say the temperature series is full of bias, it’s okie dokie.

Literally $Billions are shoveled into “climate studies”, just in the U.S. alone — every year! Only the terminally dense can’t see that lots of ethics-challenged scientists will go along with the “dangerous man-made global warming” scam for the easy money.

Organized or not, that’s a conspiracy to defraud the public based on a hoax.

Besides, it isn’t a conspiracy. It is people and organizations either acting in what they see is their best interest or perhaps just following orders. But all of this is irrelevant to the most basic point – that Karl 2015 is junk science. If you can’t acknowledge that, then it doesn’t say much about your science literacy.

I’m surprised they haven’t tried to adjust the number of major hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S. over the past decade. Obama and the media would dutifully report the new figures without batting an eye, so why not go for it!

Since it defies credulity that only temperature records before 1950 required downward adjustment and after 1950 only upward adjustments requires explanation. Not an explanation of missing stations, duplicate stations, changes in equipment or recording methodology, moving stations, etc. Those are all generic and do not address the issue.

When “adjustments” themselves have a trend independent of the data, 4 alarm fire type bells start going off. The NOAA needs to respond, if they can’t they must unfortunately be discounted as a viable source of the temperature record.

A date specific explanation is required that addresses one specific point; why data before ~1950 are all adjusted downwards and after ~1950 all adjustments upwards.

The cause of the pause seems to be a natural cycle that has held through two cycles with a period around 64 years, and that shows up in all of the global surface temperature datasets, but more strongly in HadCRUT3 than in any of the others. As I analyzed with a simple attempt at Fourier from an old peak to a modern peak, the latest peak was, to the nearest year, in 2005. The corner between a fast warming trend and a lack thereof, where linear trend lines meet, seems to be anywhere from late 2003 to early 2005, depending on the dataset and how I analyze it. Since HadCRUT3 has had a flat trend since sometime in 2001, the ~2004 corner may be the beginning of a very slight cooling trend. I wish HadCRUT3 was still being determined.

Bob, and fellows skeptics, we need to stop playing to the hands of the CAGW-team by accepting their rhetorical trick of calling interpretation of data “adjusted data” or “dataset” etc. Interpretation is what it is. Analysis is also interpretation and the public needs to understand this. The only real data is what Bob calls raw data, rest is simply someone’s interpretation of it. If we would consistently talk of interpretation, the CAGW-team would not get away so easily with their creative interpretations disguised as “new datasets”, “re-analyzed data” etc.

Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
Please note the best question describing the NOAA/NCDC new corrections on old readings. This quote is from comments below:
Harold
June 4, 2015 at 11:54 am

Is new analysis on old data anything like old wine in new bottles?
and this one:
David Chappell
June 4, 2015 at 3:08 pm

“Using updated and corrected temperature observations…” was the point at which I decided the whole exercise was a waste of time and money.

Nothing surprises any more as to the extent so called scientists can succumb to noble cause corruption.
Some wonderful comments on here and other blogs about this piece of malfeasance.Seeing as the FBI are investigation FIFA at the moment, is there any chance they could include these charlatans of the IPCC in the remit.

Thank God for people Anthony,Bob, Judith, and all the other realists. Where would we be without them

I have taken the liberty to parody an old Eddie Arnold/Elvis song written by Hank Cochran,Sheb Wooley and Jack Clement titled “Make the world go away” I hope they dont sue us for copyright

MAKE THE PAUSE GO AWAY

Make the pause go away
Get past readings colder
Say it’s hotter now today
And make the pause go away, make it go away.

Do you remember global cooling
Before icebergs melted away
Climate fraudsters were not fooling
They made the pause go away, made it go away.

Make the pause go away
Get past readings colder
Say it’s hotter now today
Make the pause go away, make it go away.

We are not sorry if we robbed you
We’ll pick your pockets day by day
“I’ll not show you my figures”
To make the pause go away, make the pause go away.

My crime was apparently linking to WUWT, since the moderators changed the rules some time ago and now ban links to sources they consider as unreliable, though it’s apparently ok to call Watts and Tisdale liars.

“The Conversation” is a site for discussion among academics, financed in the US by some big foundations, and in theUK by a score of universities. The funders might well be embarrassed to find they’re funding a media organisation which practices the crudest form of censorship, by simply banning references to certain sources, particularly when one of those sources is the world’s most popular science blog.

No doubt a lot of ethical rules are being broken there. I’d be interested to have some informed comment on that.

What I think is that the MSM will just cut and paste whatever BS they are fed and the ‘pause’ will be history by next week. I’m sure that some time ago on another WUWT post I suggested that surface temps could fall drastically over the next decade and we would hear nothing about it.

People need to understand that this has nothing to do with instrumentation or science. It is all Politics. Over the coming months (to Paris) every ‘problem’ with ‘global warming theory’ will be dealt with in the ‘scientific literature’. These people are destroying science and they don’t care. They will pay in the future and don’t care what it might cost.

Never mind de-carbonisation, we will be de-scienced by 2050. People will have realised that these fools can be bought cheaper than politicians. Need to re-introduce smoking? Buy a ‘scientist’… all essential vitamins and minerals are to be found there in your hourly smoke. Peer reviewed too!

There is no ‘pause’ because I have removed it by tampering with the evidence. As many have said … If GW were a corporation then practically everyone involved would be facing criminal trial now for fraud.

Imagine investing in a company that can turn a loss into profit by using ‘internal accounting methods’?

Is ‘Climate Science’ Enron is disguise? Would you invest in ‘Climate Science’ if it were a voluntary investment? Would you see them as robbers that were ‘playing’ with the ‘prospectus’.

Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
–
The global-warming alarmists once admitted 15 years would be needed to disprove them. Well, it has been almost 19. They keep scrambling to explain away the results. They keep fudging the data. They keep selling protection from a problem they invented, a problem they cannot even show exists.

Eventually, everyone will forget this round of alarmism, just as they have forgotten all that went before. Still, we are in for a long haul.

Never fail to speak up. You know when they finally come for you, there will be none left to speak the truth at all.

Lonnie E. Schubert:
Unfortunately, the “global warming” in a specified period is a multivalued function with the result that it is true that we are in a pause and true that we are not in a pause, violating the law of non-contradiction. This shortcoming of arguments that are based upon the existence of the “pause” is not readily apparent because unlike a temperature change the “global warming” lacks the properties of a measure. Thus, “global warming” is a misnomer. After decades of study of the global warming phenomenon, the researchers have not really identified what they mean by “global warming.”

I seem to recall another famed scientist (i use that term loosely when referring to him) who created a hockey stick graph and he too used the same deceptive tactics to make the inconvenient MEWP and the RWP disappear.. So now this is acceptable behavior in the government sectors of science as well.. IF the data dont conform to your agenda… create it! They are so bold that they didn’t even try to hide it..

The shame is that the fascist philosophy applies more often than not these days – that, if you tell a lie enough, it becomes accepted as truth.

It first happened with second-hand smoke: a patently absurd theory which anyone with the most fundamental understanding of chemistry, physics and commonsense had dismissed as junk science. Yet, the repetition of the cancer/heart-risk lie often enough convinced a large portion of the population that a whiff of cigarette smoke (not fireplace smoke – that’s “nice”) was uniquely toxic.

Just as Orwellian are the continual references to “carbon pollution”, rather than “CO2 pollution”. Once again, a Nazi or Orwellian-style tactic to conflate and overstate, with the purpose of misleading for personal advantage is blindingly evident.

Well, you’ll never see a Karl, or Mann, or Jones say that AGWing is not a problem, because that would end their grants, lifestyles and reputations. They are just as corrupted by their own actions and the system, as a Bear Stearns or Lehmann Brothers executive.

They’re all doubling-down and hoping that they can skim off enough coin (like a FIFA executive) to make sure they have a safety net as security against their proven incompetence.

There was a time when almost everyone believed what the priest told them. If the priest said there was a problem, people believed it. Eventually a lot of people began to distrust the priests, and placed more faith in what their elected leaders told them. But eventually people started to see their representatives as heir to the same failings as everyone else… And today, what do most people believe in? Science! Or, more accurately, most people have little understanding of science, but they DO still trust scientists. With CAGW, someone has decided to monetize that trust and convert it into money and power.

Of course, science works as well as always. On the other hand, scientists are selling out their trust.

I wish that someone would produce an easy to read “Global Warming Sceptic arguments for Dummies” so that it could be shared widely. It needs to show that the temperature records are not just a record of what the thermometer says and describe how many ways it is and can be adjusted.

They not only adjusted the data they filtered the data that did not match what they wanted. How can they claim an accuracy of 0.001 degree with instruments that only measure to 0.1 degree.?
Thousands of temperature stations were eliminated from the data base.

A sad day for all the people who feared that CO2AGW would destroy the planet. For the last 20 years they rested in peace, happy that the feared warming had stopped. Now, it looks like the destruction of the planet through CO2’s heating effect is certain.

No singing and dancing warmists on the streets of Germany visible today. I guess they all drown their sorrow in beer. It is a hot day, beer is exactly right for that.

On the positive side, the Biergarten season will be longer in the future.

I hope NOAA and the UN are making more sense, the last time a bunch of climate statistics were released I had to read how Egyptian soccer violence, record cold, and the rise of ISIS was due to global warming

Here is what Karl says:”…the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century.”

That statement immediately invalidates the central estimate because his measurements are false. First, according to Hansen, total warming in the twentieth century was 0.8 degrees, half of which is 0.4. Checking Hadcrut3, the second half of twentieth century is shown as 0.5 degrees because their official temperature is falsified to hide a lack of warming in the eighties and nineties. But no way can you find any graphs of the hiatus showing 0.4 or 0.5 degree temperature rise during those 15 years in the twenty-first century, This makes his statement either a lie, in which case the paper should be withdrawn, or an error made in good faith because of defective data, in which case it should be apologized for and corrected. Whichever is the case, it will not help because the science in the paper is itself defective. This points to inadequate editorial handling and/or incompetent peer review, if any.

The real question is why is NOAA doing this and ignoring their own real data from ARGO showing that ocean warming (ie global warming) is only around 0.42 watts/m2. Acceptance of anything near this figure would end the global warming ‘theory’ completely. Has NOAA been silenced by all the other alphabet agencies since they would loose their AGW funding?
This need to be answered with scientific response. NOW before Paris.